Most of Advent is focused on ideas such as eagerness, anticipation, zeal, an almost unruly propulsion towards Christmas and towards the coming of Christ in our hearts and at the end of time.  But today we slow down.  Today we relax.  Today we are calm.  This is known as Gaudete Sunday.  The Sunday of Joy.  It’s the Sunday that every priest in the world insists that it’s rose…not pink.  It’s a day when the insistent penitence and purification of Advent give way just briefly to complete serenity.  It’s Joy Sunday.  The prophet says that those saved by the Lord will be “crowned with everlasting joy.”  What does that mean?  What is joy?  It’s not the same thing as happiness.  Hard as it is to say, we are not entitled to perfect happiness in this life.  Now please God, we will be happy most of the time, and it’s good to strive for that.  But if we’re not happy from time to time, it’s ok.  It’s to be expected.  Happiness an emotion: all emotions come and go, and life can be hard.  Joy is different: joy is stable, joy abides, joy is durable.  Because it’s more than an emotion: it’s a posture, it’s a way of living, it’s a fruit of the Holy Spirit.  Joy is connected to things like hope, serenity, confidence, assurance.  Joy is knowing how the story ends.  Joy is knowing that, even if I’m not particularly happy right at this moment, that everything will be all right in the end: that God always gets the last word; that life triumphs over death; and that no cross lasts forever.  

The apostle James speaks again and again about patience.  “Be patient until the coming of the Lord.”  The whole rest of Advent, the message is: get ready, right now.  Today is the other side: life may be short, but it’s also long.  And patience is also a fruit of the Holy Spirit, and patience leads to joy.  St. James offers the witness of the prophets: even Isaiah who spoke of the Virgin who would conceive and bear a child: that took 800 years to come to fruition. Sometimes we just have to be patient.  And that takes work.  It takes work to be patient.  Sometimes we think patience is just waiting around.  Being passive.  But so often, waiting in the right way takes real work.  As the old saying goes, “It takes a lot of effort to keep a white fence, white.”  Waiting well, takes real effort.  If you leave the white fence alone, it will soon be a black fence.  If you particularly want it to be white you have to keep painting it over and over; you have to work at it.  That’s the patience we are called to have.  Pro-active waiting.  This is intimately connected with having Christian hope.  Hope is the confidence that God really is going to work things out.  That’s a hard confidence to have sometimes.  But it frees us.  Hope frees us to remain joyful, even in our unhappy moments.  

So as we look for Christ eagerly, as we should: as we try hard to find him in all the ways he comes into our lives, which we should: we should also close our eyes and just wait in patient, joyful hope.  “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.  Let your patience be known to all, for the Lord is near at hand; have no anxiety about anything, but in all things, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.  Then the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”